Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for discovering a device in a wireless communication network, and more particularly, to a method for discovering a device without an access point (AP), and an apparatus thereof.
Description of the Related Art
Among wireless communication technologies, a wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) direct network technology is a technology which enables Wi-Fi terminals to be connected to each other in a peer-to-peer (hereinafter referred to as ‘P2P’) fashion without an AP being a medium of an infrastructure network. Most of the existing Wi-Fi technologies are aimed at only connecting to the Internet through a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) AP whereby consideration of direct communication between terminals is not addressed. Direct communication between terminals may be achieved through Bluetooth technology. However, the performance quality in transmission distance and transmission speed of Bluetooth technology deteriorates as compared with the Wi-Fi Direct technology.
An existing Wi-Fi technology supports a mode in which direct communication between terminals is possible, which is called an Ad-hoc mode. However, since the Ad-hoc mode is disadvantageous in that security is weak, power consumption is high, and throughput is limited to 11 Mbps, it is rarely used.
The Wi-Fi direct technology supports Wi-Fi Protected Access® 2 (WPA2) to supplement weakness of security. Further, the Wi-Fi Direct technology supports simple connections between terminals using a Wi-Fi Simple Configuration (hereinafter referred to ‘WSC’). Moreover, the Wi-Fi direct technology provides an improved power consumption algorithm by supporting IEEE 802.11n to significantly improve throughput as compared with the Ad-hoc mode.
The Wi-Fi direct technology is a protocol manufactured based on IEEE 802.11, and is compatible with a legacy client. The Wi-Fi direct technology may be upgraded in a terminal without changing hardware.
Although the Wi-Fi direct technology has considerable advantages as illustrated above as compared with Bluetooth and Ad-hoc technologies, there is a need for a technology enabling a user to easily recognize a found terminal.